Phantom

Chapter 4

Fiona watches Amy as closely as she possibly can without having to turn away because of pure terror. She doesn't know why Amy is prolonging her inevitable demise, or why they are currently sitting outside a quaint little coffee shop in the middle of bustling Seattle, Washington. So far, no one has raised the suspicion that Amy is traveling with a mental hospital patient, but it isn't long before someone will probably notice. Fiona doesn't look at all like Amy remembered her--her once full, high, upturned cheeks have become hollow and gaunt, and her raven black hair has turned into a tangled mass of dirt and debris. Her once lively, animated dark eyes have sunk deep into her face and look like pools of emptiness. She looks like a ghost to Amy, and she can't help but wonder how her lips, still so soft and pink and delicate, can ever be turned upward into a smile again. But she doesn't have to wonder any longer, as a distant whistle signals the arrival of a train to take them directly to her Aunt Connie's house.

"C'mon, Fiona, let's go. We can't miss the train," Amy tells Fiona brusquely, shoving her trash into the nearest dull, scratched trash can as she stands up and beckons for Fiona to follow. Amy, after rescuing Fiona from the burning debris of the once Sistine Asylum of Newberry Hill, took her to the nearest hospital. After laying in a half-coma like state for almost two weeks, Fiona woke up, disoriented and groggy. After seeing Amy, however, Fiona lost it. She wasn't sure exactly what her presence had to do with Fiona's mental illness, but apparently Fiona had seen multiple apparitions of her back at the asylum, where she had been trying to kill Fiona. Fiona's name for her, therefore, had been Phantom. Multiple times during their short trip from the hospital to the coffee shop, Amy had sworn she heard Fiona muttering things like 'murder' and 'what is her plan'. Amy could only begin to imagine what that meant.

When they had been younger, Amy and Fiona had been best friends. Inseparable, many people called them. Their parents even jokingly called them twins. Then, everything changed that night Fiona witnessed her parents and two siblings tortured and brutally killed by two insane patients of a particular Sistine Asylum of Newberry Hill. Fiona, after going through that traumatic event, went insane and was apprehended and stuck in the very same Sistine Asylum her family's psychopathic murderers had come from. Ever since then, Amy had no longer been able to visit Fiona or even see her. But now, after hearing Fiona's stories of Phantom and her terrible intentions, realized that Fiona had plenty of encounters with what she thought was Amy.

Walking through the bustling crowd at the station, Amy stood by the train tracks with Fiona sulking a little over a foot behind her. Suddenly, she felt a finger tap her shoulder, and she turned around, expecting to see Fiona asking yet another futile question. Instead, a young woman who looked to be in her twenties was standing there.

"Uh, do you know when the train to Mercandale will be arriving?" the young woman asks nervously. She had tousled, boyishly cut brown hair with dull brown eyes and black framed glasses.In fact, if it wasn't for her extremely aggravating high and squeaky voice, Amy would've sworn it was a boy. And she looked extremely flustered.

"No, I'm sorry," Amy replies, smiling apologetically. She turns away from the woman to Fiona, expecting her to once again be muttering and eyeing her with the same hatred and fear she had seen the past few weeks. But Fiona wasn't there. Fiona wasn't anywhere.

She had disappeared.

Panicking, Amy pushes through the crowd and to the edge of the station, where she glimpses the fleeting form of Fiona rushing down the street, toward the bridge. It isn't that hard to spot her as she was wearing all black. Amy sprints down the street, shoving past people and tripping over shoes, not giving any apology or second look. Fiona's life was on the line, and it was worth more than a silly little push or shove. As she accidentally bumps into a woman in an obnoxiously yellow outfit with a matching purse, she spots Fiona weaving through people like a sleek black eel, her hair flying out in waves behind her.

She hears the woman angrily yell something at her retreating figure, but she doesn't pay it a second thought. Nothing would stop her from reaching Fiona, especially not something as stupid as some woman in the street. Her pale blue, cotton dress billows out around her as her sandals slip off her feet from the running, the hot concrete burning the soles of her now bare feet.

"FIONA!" Amy sobs, her voice lost in the hustle and bustle of traffic and cars in downtown Seattle. Time seems to stop as Fiona turns around to look at her, standing, teetering, on the wall of the bridge. Already, people are looking at her from the windows of cars and passing strangers. And as Amy sucks in another breath, Fiona falls, a single ray of golden sunlight illuminating her escape.